Small, handheld electronic computing devices have been steadily growing in popularity in recent years. The devices are known by different names, such as palmtops, pocket computers, personal digital assistants, personal electronic organizers, hand held PCs (H/PCs), or the like. These devices, hereinafter “small computing devices,” provide much of the same functionality as their larger counterparts. In particular, the small computing devices enable a user to perform word processing, task management, spreadsheet processing, address book functions and email functions, as well as many other functions.
In the past, a small computing device has persistently displayed the last viewed state of an application when the device was either cycled through on-off-on states or a particular application was accessed after an extended interval of inactivity. Although the user might be prompted to log in again after cycling the states of the device or extended intervals of inactivity, the prior art has not provided for “resetting” an application to a particular default state/view.
There are some scenarios where it would be preferable to display a default state for an application running on a small electronic device instead of the last displayed state. For example, when a small computing device is turned off for more than 24 hours, a current user session for the device is probably over. When the device is eventually turned on again, the user typically wants to start a new user session to complete a new task that may be significantly different than the task performed in the last user session. In this case, navigation to a particular application to complete the new task could be made easier if all of the applications on the device were displayed in their default states for the new user session.
Also, when a small computing device is turned “on” and applications running on the device have not been selected for an extended period of time e.g., one hour or more, it might be preferable for these applications to return to their default states. Although a small computing device can be left turned “on” in a charging cradle for extended periods of time without user interaction, the last state of each application on the device may not be preferred when a new user session is eventually started to solve another task at a later time.
A more complete appreciation of the invention and its improvements can be obtained by reference to the accompanying drawings, which are briefly summarized below, to the following detail description of presently preferred embodiments of the invention, and to the appended claims.